She didn't remember me but flashed a lovely smile that was her trademark. I wasn't offended, but grateful that I had been among the multitude of friends who were privileged to know her. Joan Mondale was a gracious and lovely person.

In 1950s New York City, while the Beat poets Ginsberg and Kerouac had the luxury of simply being poets, hitching their dreams to stars with the freedom and privilege of living in opposition to bourgeoise America, LeRoi Jones was black in America.

Inside a suburban Kansas City Wal-Mart on Black Friday 2013, (the so-called inaugural holiday shopping season immediately following Thanksgiving) artist Mark Allen zips himself inside one of his custom body bags and plays dead. Allen gets the reaction he expects.

Art Pepper's description of his life in jazz and his descent into heroin addiction is mesmerizing in its veracity. These artists and this lost world is examined from many angles in these works give more than a primo peak at the hot birth of the real cool. You dig.

Whether a beginner or a seasoned pro, there is something of interest on this list that will offer revelation into the inner workings of the art world, helping to keep the acquisition process about excitement, rather than the stress of negotiation.

It's been an Andy Warhol-centric time for me: two weeks of mastering dead-in-the-eye stares, sporting a black turtleneck and inviting external chaos into my life. Plus, I have worn my pinned-up blonde wig to filth -- like, actual filth.

Lou Reed has been one of rock music's most profound innovators since bursting onto the New York club scene in the mid-'60s with his now-legendary band, The Velvet Underground. Much of Lou Reed's career has followed this path: work that was often misunderstood upon its first release, then usually hailed as a masterpiece in retrospect.